


Goodbye

by baggyeyes



Category: There Will Be Blood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-03
Updated: 2017-02-03
Packaged: 2018-09-21 19:08:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9562556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baggyeyes/pseuds/baggyeyes
Summary: Mary Sunday Plainview visits Daniel, and he tries to bait her.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I feel extraordinarily out of my depth here. Critique if you will, I just wanted to give Mary a voice. **WARNING: THERE BE SPOILERS.** Do not read if you haven't seen, but intend to see the film and want to be spoiler-free.
> 
> Music used when writing: In this Heart - Sinead O'Connor

Mary walked down the long hall, the various smells assaulting her senses. The prison stank of piss, sweat and other things, but she tried not to think what those other things were. She knew very well what those smells were - she'd grown up with those smells all around her, with her father and two brothers, at war with one another in different ways. The guard brought her to a stop at a certain door. 

"I can't meet him in private?" Mary asked the guard.

"Not after the incident last week, ma'am," the guard said. "he bit off the nose of the priest who came to pray with him." Mary shuddered. 

"Sorry, ma'am," the guard said. The guard banged on the cell bars. "Visitor, Plainview! Daughter-in-law!" 

The man she had come to see lay on his side, back turned to the cell bars. He barely fit on the wooden bench that served as a bed. Daniel Plainview was not to stay in this particular cell. He was to be moved to another one, in another part of the state after his sentencing. 

Daniel sat up, his eyes in that peculiar squint of his, his black and gray hair stringy and fallen around his face.

"Mary!" Daniel said with what seemed to her to be forced cordiality, "how are you? How is the bastard?" She ignored that last bit, chose to believe the separation would have been only a temporary one. 

"I'm fine, Mr. Plainview," Mary said.

"Why are you here?" Daniel asked. "Here to ask me 'why, oh why, did I take the life of such a wonderful man of God?'"

"No, sir," Mary said. She knew all about the battles between the two men. If anybody could have predicted the outcome, perhaps it would have been her, had she not been preoccupied with H.W., and their plans for the future.

"No?" Daniel asked with a smile, and seemed genuinely surprised. "Are you here to ask me what he said to me before he died?"

"No, sir," Mary said.

"What about Paul," Daniel said, "Do you want to know where Paul is?"

"I know where Paul is," Mary said. "Sir, I know of the rift between you and my brother, Eli. I know how . . ,"

"Rift?" Daniel burst out in a loud, raucous laughter. He clapped his hands together as though she had told the best joke.

"Rift?" Daniel repeated, "Girl, that slimy, spineless little piglet and I did not have a rift. A rift implies we were friends of some sort at some time. I assure you, young lady, we were not. 

"No," Daniel said, his smile widened, "that little hermaphrodite and I were not in a rift. I hated that little sissy bastard. Talking about God, while sticking his paws into poor people's purses. Does that make you angry, Mary, the way I talk about that little cock sucker?"

She was silent for a bit, because Daniel had never, ever spoken to her in such a rude and disrespectful way. But he hated Eli, and that colored everything now. She could see the hate flash in his eyes.

"No, sir," Mary said.

"What's that?" 

"I said, no, sir," Mary said a little louder. He stared at her with that strange squint. It sometimes unnerved her, like it did when he caught her, drunk as he was, at the celebration of the beginning of the drilling of the Little Boston oil well. But he'd said she looked pretty in the dress he'd bought her, and said she wouldn't get beaten anymore. Daniel had said that right in front of her father, and true enough, she wasn't beaten ever again.

"You aren't afraid of me, are you Mary?" Daniel asked.

"No, I am not, sir," Mary said.

"You should be," Daniel said. "For I am a bad man. A very, very bad man. He walked up to the bars and reached out, a large hand on either side of her, held onto the iron bars to steady him.

"No, sir, you are not," Mary insisted. "You are a good man, who has done bad things."

"And what makes you say that?" Daniel asked. He had a cruel smile on his mouth, and he leaned in with his head. It gave him the appearance of a human vulture.

"You defended me when no one else did," Mary said simply. 

"I killed your brother, Eli, the 'Chosen One'," Daniel said. "what about that? Don't you feel angry about that? Don't you feel horror about that?"

"I feel horror," Mary admitted. "One way or another, one of you would have ended up dead. I knew it. I just didn't know exactly who it would be." 

"Of course, it would be him," Daniel said. "He was too much of a spineless piglet sissy to have done me in. You should have heard him squeeing like the piglet he was, his little curly tail, all aquiver in fright."

Mary felt the tears fall from her eyes. 

"You cry for him," Daniel said. He nodded, his smile came back to his face, that hard cruel look back into his eyes. You want me to hate you, Mary thought.

"I cry for both of you," Mary said. She drew closer, and looked straight into his eyes. 

"Daniel," Mary said, "Daniel, I forgive you. No matter what, I will always remember your kindness to me. I will always remember."

Daniel shook his head, his hands gripped the bars as though she had lanced him with a hot, burning poker. His eyes were squeezed shut. 

She touched his hand and he flinched.

"Thank you, Mary," Daniel said, in a hearty, cordial voice. His business voice, she assumed. "You can go now. Thank you for coming to see me. Give my best to . . . H.W." His eyes were still squeezed shut, his hands still gripped the bars tight. His head was bowed so that if any tears, or sweat fell, they fell to the floor. 

She kissed her hand, and brought her hand to one of his enclosed fists. The hand tightened that much more at her touch.

"You really must go, now, Mary."

"Goodbye, Mr. Plainview," Mary said.

"Goodbye, Mary."

Mary didn't know how long he had before he was executed. H.W. told her he would not stay for the trial, but he did. She wondered if he would stay to see his father laid in the ground. She hoped he would.

Mary Sunday Plainview walked out of the prison into the afternoon sunshine. She breathed in the fresh air. She would say a prayer for her father-in-law, but not until he had been executed. She thought that would be more respectful to him, somehow. 

For Eli, she thought very little. He had turned his back on his family the first chance he'd gotten, and he had never given her any shelter from the beatings their father gave out. She loved him in her own way, but he was as much of a mystery to her as God himself. Distant, then as now, untouchable.


End file.
